Have your say
Join a global conversation to find cancer's toughest challenges
The consultation process to identify our next round of challenges is now closed. Thank you to everyone that joined in this global conversation by submitting your ideas. The final list of the new challenges will be announced in March 2023.
Important dates
Have your say: submit your idea for cancer’s toughest challenges to our Online Ideas Portal.
The new round of challenges are posed to the research community, inviting diverse, global teams to take them on.
Submit your expression of interest for review by the Cancer Grand Challenges Scientific Committee.
Shortlisted teams receive seed funding of £30k to develop a full proposal.
Successful teams each receive £20M over 5 years to come together, think differently and take on one of cancer’s toughest challenges.
What makes a Cancer Grand Challenge?
A Cancer Grand Challenge is an important and complex problem in cancer research, which, if solved, could have significant benefit for patients and/or the wider public in the long term; solving such a problem requires multiple scientific, technological and intellectual barriers to be overcome.
A challenge can be related to any problem relevant to understanding, preventing, detecting or treating cancer, and can be a new problem or one that has confounded us for many decades. It must be of such scale that it can’t be addressed through standard funding mechanisms and instead calls for a multidisciplinary, global team science approach. Any approach to addressing the challenge should require significant technical innovation.
How the challenges are set
Our Cancer Grand Challenges Scientific Committee will review all ideas captured through this consultation process and recommend which challenges should be posed to the global research community.
Cancer Research UK and the National Cancer Institute will agree the new challenges and they will be announced in March 2023.
Explore previous challenges
Need inspiration? Take a look at the challenges set in previous rounds of funding.